Wild Goose Chase, Mark I
by lovablegeek
Summary: S1 - Torchwood picks up a distress signal in Siberia... from Torchwood. - One shot


For some reason, things always seemed to happen when Tosh was busy doing something else. Hacking into UNIT files Torchwood technically shouldn't have, for instance, was something she'd rather not be interrupted in the middle of. Eventually, however, the flashing notification in the corner of the screen got annoying enough that she had to pay attention to it.

"Jack?"

He didn't actually move from his office, just leaned over so he could see her through his office door. "Problem?"

"Not with the UNIT files, it's just... I'm picking up a distress signal." She paused a moment to bring up a set of coordinates on her screen. "From Siberia."

Jack frowned a little. Tosh couldn't blame him. "A distress signal? What is it, a crashed spaceship or...?"

"It says it's from Torchwood."

Tosh watched as Jack lunged out of his chair so fast he nearly knocked it over in an effort to get out of his office and to her desk as quickly as possible. "_What_?"

* * *

Somehow, Gwen had thought Jack was joking when he told her Torchwood Four was lost - she never knew when to take him seriously, and at the time that seemed odd even for Torchwood. She was rapidly learning not to make that assumption - that, in fact, if anything about Torchwood sounded remotely normal, _that_ was reason to question it.

The speed with which Jack managed to commandeer a UNIT helicopter, for instance, seemed far from normal. When Torchwood One still existed, he'd explained, they had their own helicopters, while these days... From what Gwen overheard of Jack's phone call to UNIT, it involved a mixture of charm and vague, somewhat ominous comments about the Rift.

"Someone please explain to me," she said, raising her voice to be heard over the helicopter blades, "how an entire branch of Torchwood disappears? How many people were there?"

"Fourteen," Jack said with all certainty, and then glanced to Ianto. Ianto shook his head, and Jack amended, "Fifteen. Reports vary. Either way, I'm sure they're fine."

Typical Jack response, Gwen thought, rolling her eyes. Answer her without answering the main question at all.

"As far as we can tell," Tosh said, "they were testing some sort of alien technology and... something went wrong."

"Someone pushed the wrong button, you mean," Owen muttered from beside Gwen. "I really doubt it decided to kidnap them on its own."

"So what actually _happened_?"

"They've been bouncing through space and time," Jack said. "It happened two years ago, linear time - for them, it could be a few days, could be decades. Assuming we can get to them in time, we might be able to help."

Owen commented that a field trip to Russia seemed entirely too much trouble, Ianto argued... and Gwen sat there, in the noise of the helicopter, wondering if anyone had even told their families what happened, if anyone ever would.

* * *

The UNIT pilot would only land them as close as the nearest town, and Jack finally gave up arguing. Instead, he swaggered from the helicopter boldly as ever, walked up to the first person he found with a truck, and said cheerfully, "_Privet_!"

"_Zdravstvujte_," Tosh murmured beside him, correcting him.

Jack shrugged it off and continued, "_Men'a zovut_ Jack Harkness..." From there, Gwen stopped listening - it all became a mass of foreign syllables as the man argued, and Jack went on... She was cold, huddled into an anorak, and not interested enough to listen closely, though she caught the word "Torchwood" as he flashed some paper, and the man finally relented.

As many times as Tosh said "_prastite_" as they all crowded into the truck, Gwen decided it had to be an apology.

After a day in a helicopter, hours in a truck driving through featureless tundra, Tosh announced they'd reached the correct coordinates.

Jack stopped the truck.

Gwen and Owen tumbled out into the cold just to stretch their legs, looked around slowly... and saw absolutely nothing out of place.

"Say, Jack?" Owen asked tightly. "Wasn't Torchwood Four supposed to be here?"

"I did say they bounced through space and time. I guess they've... bounced off again."

Owen clenched his jaw, glowering at the snow like it had insulted him personally. "Great. So what do we do now?"

"Well. We did come all this way. Anything you ever wanted to do in Russia?"


End file.
